by Marc Horne
"Go to bed," said my father apparently from nowhere "We'll talk about this."
Claire took my hand and led me up the stairs.
I had not seen her for a long time by the time I got to Japan.
Chapter 12
I returned from Tokyo-proper back to Koiwa, which was a lot like home to me. I had finished my sake and as people survive enormous car crashes that rend steel and we can't really understand it except sometimes someone mentions that babies can survive falls from enormous heights and that helps, so I got home.
The strange alcohol of sake infused me. On the train home (it was dark and late) a salaryman kept long eye contact with me his head bobbing like, but not in time with, the train. He had a dirty look on his face, which was a face where thick wrinkles are the skeleton and the rest is meat and his hair looked sharp like sea shells round the edges. I don't know what his look said to me, but it was something like "We aren't so different after all! We are both drunken pieces of shit." I felt just drunk, not too bad existentially. It was my day off, after all.
So, I was back on that elevated platform and with a thousand people I went down a seventy foot wide staircase very slowly and a lot like a waterfall or something one might watch for pleasure.
I left the station and a little alleyway that I hadn't seen before was now illuminated by dozens of red lanterns. Older men in those small happi jackets that were cut low on the chest, and wearing headbands were sitting outside making potato-peeling type actions. Only they were holding fish.
I tended down the alley. It was full of little bars. I made a guest appearance in one and an old man bought me a slug to eat and I knew he was taking the piss, but I smiled and ate it and all the oyajis in the bar had a great time and slime dribbled down my chin and I may even have been smiling but I probably wasn't. You know, I can smell sake as I think about all this.
There was a hot breeze coming up from the hot plate where the good food dwelt. I put down a bottle of complimentary beer in the bar. I lost my concentration and the old men must have been reduced to pulling on my sleeve to try and get communication going with me. They had a strong need to say something to me.
"Don't!"
No that wasn't it, and I brusquely left. In the alley I stood and everyone was having a great time. You could hear the enka music that was once political violin music and now was what you sang when you were drunk and couldn't struggle with "My Way." In the manner of all Japanese music, it was a little melancholy to the Western ear, struggling from a static place like a man drowning.
At the end of the alley there was a flare of silk, made more silky by a leg that flashed through it, splitting the light. Clutching a tiny purse against her side and breathing motion into everything she touched was a stunning Phillipina whose eyes were dark and whose lips were dark, but both were opening as I looked and light pursued them. It was the same Phillipina I had seen earlier when half a man, but done with all that now. She smiled at me, and my ilk, and the alleyway secluded her as she moved to new things.
Oh, I had to go home before I did something embarrassing. I had a feeling that the other end of the alleyway would take me home so I strolled down it: devil may care, whistling a tune (please no one bump into me.)
Coming out, I was just a right turn away from home. The street was dark but fairly clear: a Korean grocers I recognized, the same three people seemingly trapped inside: no more than one of them the 'master' but which.
A large pink Jaguar rolled by. I knew that incredible things could be happening inside it: a man being strangled, new style Hong Kong blow job, a fax slowly crumpled and a knife sharpened. The romance of the human race as epitomized by the violent gangster.
Dad had been particularly hard on me when he discovered that I had a liking for "The Godfather" and "The Untouchables." He told me it was no coincidence that Stalin had been a gangster in his youth. Gangsters never silently stole, invested, killed, retired. They always wore something or did something to aggrandize themselves. Superiority was the ultimate gangster motive. Pol Pot was a gangster, Hitler was a gangster, all the other enemies of our family were gangsters at root: excluding and including, making a new context for themselves where they were right. To be uninterrupted right was the final peace they sought when it had started just as muscle and fighting, for which one could have some sympathy at least.
But gangsters… I admit it, I didn't fully agree with Dad on this one point. The Khmer Rouge had death camps, killed my mother. And they did this because of a need to purify, to expunge some external elements. Basically a refusal to accept that they were the same as all the other humans. But the gangster, on TV, seemed to admit that he was in many ways inferior to the people around him. But he was just more violent than them, which made his life easier.
I had to admit it was a fine line.
Getting near home I was just moments away from my first Yakuza encounter. It came about because I started running. How that came about… it was something to do with alcohol. Either some alcohol hit my system and I became energized falsely or my body managed to metabolize a block of alcohol and I got some genuine life. Either way, I felt the need to run.
And in running, I passed once more the silver citadel and my eyes became focused on the illuminated sex sign over my door. And it seems unlikely but at the same time I was thinking of my childhood sweetheart and the Phillipina. And my legs, heart etc. were also pulling some current from my mind. I ran smack bang into a man in an ice-blue suit and we didn't tumble but were driven into the ground and slid along it like planes landing (not scaled down much.)
Looking up, I saw a portly Japanese man whose face was opened up by the incident. His eyes were magnified immensely by thick lenses bolted to his head by industrial frames. He was wearing a cape I think and a young and terrified women cowered in front of him. Very professional, I thought, of her.
And what was I tangled up with? Something that threw a hard fist in my ribs and had a perm that smelt but minutes old in my face. He got up faster than me and was cursing pure sound. The couple relaxed and I was getting kicked fairly lightly. His shoes were so shiny that they skidded off me anyway. His near-white suit was smeared with mild street dirt, and I was the cause and the substance in his eyes.
He pulled me up. I would have loved to have helped but he was pretty much on his own. His face… he was chewing something and it illuminated his livid complexion so that sparks of fire came from him. His hair was orange and seemed to spread from his third eye. His face was not a mask but his eyes were obscured by rage. I resisted as he pulled me into the alley to get serious. But he had the advantage of surprise, like his whole nation.
He threw me against a wall and I planned to kick at waist level at the right moment. There was a little pause and then he leaned back against the opposite wall and arranged his cigarette and started smoking it.
"You should be more careful," he said in excellent American. "If that had happened to any of the other guys… you would be bleeding now."
"Yeah… sorry" I said. It was beginning to seem that no one got beaten up properly in this country. My own earlier attempt had not really gone the way that I expected.
The gangster's face was different in repose and in the glow of the cigarette. The orange hair was no longer an issue and his face had relaxed to show sharp cheekbones, fleshy lips and thick sprawling eyebrows that were nudging against each other as thoughts passed beneath the bone beneath them.
He pulled his hand back to slap me. I didn't flinch and then he began laughing warm-naturedly. "You're a tough guy… or drunk!"
"Both… " I joked and we had a good laugh at that.
Somehow I ended up going for a drink with him. Half way to the place he was taking me post-adrenaline kicked in and my swirled and poisoned stomach decided to get a clean start and vomited up pale brown water in a gutter. No comment from either side, although he did offer me a handkerchief. His name was Tetsuo.
"So… yeah. I learned English in Okinawa. I come from Tokyo, b
ut I had to spend two years in Okinawa. You know how it is. In Okinawa I have a American girl… or two. So I learn English.
"Finally I come back to Tokyo… big city. But it looks different… not so big. Busy and full, but no room. Can't see the water even though it's just a few kilometers away. That's crazy. Also everyone avoids everyone… never says hello. How can I tell if I am being a scary tough guy or not?! Everyone is scared all day long.
"In the clubs, or the bath houses, the bosses talk business and we watch. It is fun to watch them talk. You never know what they decided, but things get done so I guess they know.
"Then we go out and beat up some guy or cut him or burn his shop down. His life totally changes at that time… but mine don't."
"I know what you mean. I have a job to do here too like yours… "
The bar is falsely supported by blackened wooden beams and off in the distance over one of them, Honda enters the bar and goes to get a drink. I tell Tetsuo that my boss just came in to the bar and he winks then leaves. Honda doesn't come to join me. In a plate glass window I check that I am not bloodied or bruised and then I join him. We quietly drink together: he says that he is very tired.
Chapter 13
A few more days passed and then we had a big meeting: diagrams, whispers… the whole thing.
Benny Odajima, Junko Watanabe, Yosuke Kawabata, Takeshi Honda and me. We gathered in our living room.
"I think I have found a chemist for what we need: the components," Honda told us but the telling seemed to weigh heavily on him.
"Is he one of us?" asked Odajima, and his need to know was intense.
"Basically," was Honda's reply an then he smoothed out a map in a clinical manner. He smoothed it like a wind leaving a lake. His hand was a little larger than mine and looked to weigh twice as much.
Attention passed to me. "I have written instructions I would like him to carry out… but I will take care of the final stages… some of this can't be written down, for obvious reasons."
Odajima didn't bother to disguise his hatred for me at that moment. Or possibly he was incapable of hiding it : his face was so rotten it had lost all complexity : love and hate shone through the thinning tissues.
"You have secrets from us?" he asked, inquiring into my face. He moved his eyes from point to point of my face, measuring rather than plain judging it seemed.
"In some places our interests are the same. In other places they are different." Something about this job and this place minimalized my dialog like this. In a variety of ways the space where a man like Odajima and a mine like me could understand each other was limited.
"How can we trust you?" he asked. Interestingly enough he didn't ask me, but rather his companions. Yosuke's face said "Good Point", Junko's "Screw you (both?)" Honda's said "My name is Takeshi Honda."
"Benny… it's too late for that question to have any point. And why are you called Benny, anyway?" I asked.
Strangely the argument was over and although I was sure he held a grudge Benny didn't pursue his line of Argument. It turns out he was called Benny because at university he had incessantly listened to Benny and The Jets by Elton John. Junko moved towards Honda. She was short and looked up in his eyes. She was too close. Looking up, her thick greasy hair slowly flowed back from its home on the fringes of her face and slight jowls thinned out to reveal weak bones. Still in his suit Honda did not move away from her, even though she was definitely too close. He did relax his normally upright posture, perhaps to throw less contrast between his rigidity and her almost fluid stance, eyes, voice : voice speaking Japanese. Slowly she spoke it and each word was produced and swallowed with the regularity of the vocalization and the repetitive basic sounds, each clear and alone and vaguely predictable after a day or two among them.
Honda impressed himself by answering as follows.
"So, you're saying that our guest should have to prove himself. Well, that's not at all needed. But, by a chance our guest shall be doing some more jobs with us." Then he said something in Japanese. Then "Yes, I said that you can pretend it is a test."
Yosuke spoke "You talk when you sleep!" he said to me.
I did not know. This was bad. Two nights before, I had heard Yosuke remove his underpants through the thin board that only almost reached the ceiling between our rooms but was painted and smoothed as if it was considered finished. The wall told me that space was different in Japan. It was not divided by force but by mutual silence and closed eyes.
The pants fell off slowly. When you wait for a woman in bed you can hear that noise when it comes through the dark. It is a whisper in your ear and also like church bells ringing from a secret church. These heavily charged undertones could not escape the gravitational pull of the undoubtedly huge pants shuffling down ribbed legs. I was getting over it.
"Really… anything interesting?"
"You were saying one word I didn't know many times… maybe a girl's name! hurr hurr! And you were saying 'There is no different' or 'I find no different' or another thing. You're too loud."
You're too fat and too crazy. I said this to myself before proceeding with normal, smooth conversation. The mind has many tools for healing itself. In the short term. Long term it is fucked. Everyone in the room was a crazed cultist with a plan, thinking they were right and willing to wipe out civilization to do it. Me too, although in my case the means and end were a razor-thickness apart. Also we (man on Earth) communicated like we did sex. In the dark/spasmodically/ somewhat selfishly/ full of inherited symbols/only one on one at root/ amounting to nothing in the best case/in the worst case we were not joined but instead divided… something new came in the world but was too much like us to be relevant.
"Well, let me know if it gets worse… singing etc. Otherwise I'm sure it will get better. I doubt you'll hear anything new… I think I sleep the same every night."
I was mumbling by the end, but to begin with very confident. I hoped that nothing bad would come of this. Maybe it was just the drink that got me talking. I could watch that.
"Let's look at this map. Then we will talk about reuniting Mr Mizukami with his family." said Honda and we looked at the map which was a map of a man's house with all his little things in it and elicited a smile of impressedness in all of us. It was like a CAT scan of the man's head.
"We will use very little force. Just surprise. He will be too afraid, so he will scream. If we make him more afraid he will stop. I can keep him quiet for the transition."
"Where are his family?" I asked
"He believes them to be dead," was Honda's reply and if he didn't look at me it was to spare me the force of his eyes which could not compromise.
"Are they dead?"
"It may benefit you to think so." The rest of the meeting was the strategy of taking him in the night… they called this self-defense. They always do
I went to my room and read the email that I had received from Claire, before I deleted it. It was short, reporting on how everyone in her city assumed that something bad was going to happen. Also, there was a chart correlating police brutality and the average hours spent watching TV. That was her forte… correlations. She was awfully far from me: but we were correlated. Variables measuring the time left. Delete.
Chapter 14
In the small car, we began to move out of Tokyo. Of course it resisted but it was getting late and it was getting tired and had put most of its toys in their boxes for the evening. Moving out of the city, you don't notice that you are doing so. Lights stay all around you and the same signs repeat. The city is as blind as we are in this respect. With no clear boundaries it lies undifferentiated like primordial ooze. All it will take is lightning to make it find out what it really is. Imagine if some radically different form of life had been skittering around on the ooze when the first biology woke. No remains of that life are with us today… we're all one big family here.
Speaking of family… I really wanted to know the fate of the Lawyer's family. Had they been killed by the Tokyo Death
Cult? And if so did the lawyer know? And if not then where were they? And returning to "if they were dead," then why were they dead? So soon… couldn't these people wait.
I slept for a while, as I discovered when we hit a bump in the road and whiplash went up my neck and out of my mouth along a slender thread of spit. Outside, the night was fully established and we were in the country. Crickets made a racket and there were craggy looking mountains in vague silhouette. Everything smelt different, like different weather had made it. The time of the mountains always astounded me. Geologic war to human war to logic war was an incredible acceleration. Would the forces that followed mankind be cruel or benign? Were tectonic plates guilty of vast "genocide" against vulnerable granite seams. When I thought like that I could get confused.
"Honda," I whispered across to the driver, who guided us through the night.
"You're awake?"
"Yes… how about some straight answers"
"From me or from you?" he smiled and his strong teeth showed. My less strong teeth also showed. After all we hadn't started killing anyone yet!
"First of all… oh ,from you… first of all that woman… the one who followed us."
"Ah yes, she is Mr Maruhashi's personal assistant… Mayumi… you like her?"
"I didn't like suddenly seeing her today… she is following us right?"
"Most likely. Although Maruhashi-san is strong in the Path, he considers himself a man the equal of our leader in purely earthly matters such as spying, making money. So he would have you followed even though basically satisfied with you. He is so rich that we think this is OK.
"By the way… why did you so scared of her?"
"Scared! No… just, well, until I know who is who… I don't like surprises."
"I have heard some good stories about her."
"Really?"